Rong Tang received her doctorate from the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She has taught evaluation of information services, technology for information professionals, library automation systems, digital information services and providers...

With a background in Economic Development and Political Economy and a joint appointment in Economics and Women’s and Gender Studies, Professor Biewener’s most current research interests address the political economy of food – a fabulous way of combining her love of gardening and food with her keen interest in community economies.

In 2013 she completed a long-term, collaborative research project with Marie-Hélène Bacqué (Professor of Urban Studies, Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre) that traced the genealogy of the term "empowerment" in the fields of gender and development, urban policy and social work. Publications from this research include “Feminism and the Politics of Empowerment in International Development” (forthcoming in Air and Space Power Journal–Africa and Francophonie); L’empowerment, une pratique emancipatrice (Editions La Découverte, 2013; Spanish translation forthcoming in 2015); and “Different manifestations of the concept of empowerment. The politics of urban renewal in the United States and Great Britain” (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, August 2012).

Prior research and publications have addressed community development and social economy projects in the United States and Canada, debates at the intersection of poststructuralist feminism and postmodern Marxism, and the French Socialist government's financial and industrial policies in the 1980s.

Currently Professor Biewener is an Associate Editor for Signs, Journal of Women in Culture and Society and she has served on the Editorial Board of Rethinking Marxism (1990-2001). In 2009 she co-organized (with Randy Albelda,
UMass-Boston) the 18th Annual Conference of the International Association for Feminist Economics, “Engendering Economic Policy,” which was hosted by Simmons College.

Professor Biewener oversees the Economics Department Internship program, and was Coordinator for the interdisciplinary minor in Social Justice from 2004-2013.

Melanie Kimball, who began at GSLIS in Spring 2009, received her doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she also got her master's degree in library and information science. Kimball has published articles in Library Trends, Public Libraries, and Teacher-Librarian, among others.

Tamara J. Cadet, Ph.D., L.I.C.S.W., M.P.H., is an Assistant Professor at the Simmons School of Social Work. She holds a faculty appointment at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine in Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology. Dr. Cadet chose Simmons to launch her academic career in July 2012, despite multiple...

Dr. Doherty received her PhD in Government with a concentration in Public Policy from Northeastern University after receiving a BA in Government from Clark University. As an undergrad, she had many different roles as a student, not unlike many of our students here at Simmons: captain of the Women’s Basketball team, member of the Admissions Staff, and explorer of the many academic opportunities that a liberal arts college has to offer.

Currently, Dr. Doherty serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the College of Arts and Sciences where she supports the Dean of CAS around faculty and student academic needs. These include areas such as general education, academic support, and majors/program curriculum. She is also the director of the graduate Program in Public Policy as well as the 3+1 accelerated program in Public Policy.

A proud member of the Department of Political Science and International Relations, Dr. Doherty’s teaching is centered around the American Political System, with a concentration on gender and politics, popular culture and public policy. She was honored to be named Professor of the Year by students in 2008 and received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising in 2009.

She is also the co-host of the Sports Profs, a weekly sports talk radio show on Simmons College internet Radio. Each week, Dr. Doherty with Dr. Daren Graves from the Education department talk sports as it intersects with race, gender, and class. “Real talk, with an academic twist.” When not at Simmons, Dr. Doherty enjoys watching and playing all sports with her two partners in crime, husband Mark and son, Donovan. She also enjoys music, reading, and really bad television.

Lisa Hussey, who joined the GSLIS faculty in Fall 2008, was formerly the director of library services at DeVry University in Arizona, and has taught at the University of British Columbia and the University of Missouri, where she received her doctoral degree. She also served as program manager for the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. Hussey has given several presentations on diversity in librarianship and what motivates minorities to choose a library science career.

Heather Hole is Assistant Professor of Arts Administration and Art History in the Department of Art and Music at Simmons College. She is the author of the book Marsden Hartley and the West: The Search for An American Modernism, published by Yale University Press, and the curator of the traveling exhibition of the same name. In her previous position as curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, she played a key role in planning and installing the new Art of the Americas Wing, which opened in November of 2010.

Dr. Strowman teaches Biostatistics and Capstone Seminar III in the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program. She also provides statistical consultation on Capstone projects and Master's theses in the Nursing and Nutrition departments. Dr. Strowman joined the School of Nursing and Health Sciences faculty in 2008 after working for several years in the Academic Technology Department as a Statistical Software Consultant.

Dr. Strowman brings to the classroom over 20 years of experience in research, including several years as a consultant in public health. She has provided statistical and survey consultation in a variety of areas including cardiovascular health promotion, tobacco control, the relation between stress and hospitalization, and health risk behavior. Dr. Strowman's professional experience is integrated into her teaching through an emphasis on real-world examples and applications.

Professor Strowman has also taught Statistics and provided consultation in the Schools of Social Work, Management, and Library and Information Science.

Michael L. Brown is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics. He came to Simmons in 1986 and, for his first fifteen years at the College, taught half-time in mathematics and statistics, and half-time in computer science. Following that period, he has been teaching entirely in mathematics and statistics.

Professor Brown’s interests have been wide-ranging and interdisciplinary. As an applied mathematician, earlier in his career, he published in major journals in mathematical statistics, biophysics, and medical informatics. He also produced working papers in computer hardware design and econometric modeling. He in addition published expository mathematics. He was a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Computer Research Center of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

In recent years his interdisciplinary reach has taken new directions. He seeks to connect the mathematical sciences with issues of public interest, as well as with the arts. Twelve of his Letters to the Editor (eleven signed with his Simmons affiliation) on these topics have appeared in the New York Times. He is also concerned with the deeper motivations for learning and, more generally, questions of meaning and ethics in psychological life. He is a member of the Faculty Learning Community on Student Learning Theory, and has been a longtime member of the Simmons Honor Board. In the arts, he has a particular interest in theatre and drama, exemplified for instance by his very well-received performed readings at the Harvard Strindberg Symposium, a centennial gathering of scholars in honor of one of the founders of the modern theatre.

His Ph.D. is in Applied Mathematics, with a specialty in mathematical statistics, from Harvard. His A.M. is in Applied Mathematics, with a specialty in the mathematical physics of fluid dynamics, also from Harvard. His B.A. is from Columbia College of Columbia University in New York, where he was the valedictorian of his graduating class of more than 600 students.

My research looks at broad issues associated with the transmission of microbial pathogens in the indoor environment. The applied research in my lab allows undergraduate students to get involved in developing and piloting research methodologies and also, to get published in peer review journals.

I serve as a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the International Forum on Home Hygiene and on the editorial board of the American Journal of Infection Control. This allows me to disseminate information on matters of hygiene and infection control and I am frequently quoted in the press.

My passion is for microbiology and public health and I am committed to the rigorous preparation of Simmons students for graduate programs and careers in this field. I am also deeply committed to two other related issues. One is finding strategies to inform the general public on aspects of microbiology and infection control that impact our daily lives. The other is the issue of keeping women in the STEM disciplines and strengthening the STEM pipeline for women from school through to postdoctoral careers.

Dr. Beebe joined the faculty at Simmons College in July 2013. He has been a physical therapist since 2000, and practiced primarily in orthopaedic and sports physical therapy settings. He served as an assistant professor of physical therapy at the University of South Dakota for nearly five years after completing his PhD in Movement Science from Washington University in 2008. Dr. Beebe has 13 peer-reviewed publications and 30 national and international presentations. He is a member of the American Physical Therapy Association where he serves as Chairman of the Section on Research Abstract Review Committee, and is a member of the Research Committee of the Orthopaedic section. He is a manuscript reviewer for Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy, Physical Therapy Journal, and SportsHealth.

Afaa Michael Weaver (Michael S. Weaver) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, where he graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute at the age of sixteen as a National Merit finalist. After two years at the University of Maryland, he entered fifteen years of factory work, during which time he wrote and published.

During the Vietnam War, Professor Weaver served honorably in the 342nd Army Security Agency of the Army Reserves. He ended that period of blue collar factory work in 1985, when he received an NEA fellowship in poetry. In that same year Professor Weaver entered Brown University's graduate writing program on a full university fellowship. While completing his M.A. at Brown, he also completed his B.A. in Literature in English at Excelsior College.

Later Professor Weaver taught at Essex County College, Seton Hall Law School, New York University, Brooklyn College, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He came to Simmons in 1998, after receiving tenure with distinction at Rutgers University. At Simmons he is a tenured full professor and holds the Alumnae Endowed Chair, the first chair to be established at the college and one that is reserved for working writers.

In addition to the NEA, Professor Weaver has received several awards over the years, including the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award (2014), May Sarton Award (2010), several Pushcart Prizes (2008, 2013, 2014), a Pew fellowship (1998), a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowship (1994), and a Fulbright appointment as a scholar (2002) at National Taiwan University and Taipei National University of the Arts.

He is the author of numerous books of poetry, a collection of essays which he edited, several essays and articles in various academic and trade publications, and short fiction. As a freelance journalist he has written for the Baltimore Sunpapers, Baltimore Afro-American, The Philadelphia Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore City Paper, and The Philadelphia Sun. He has been the editor of Obsidian III at North Carolina State University, and the editor and founder of 7th Son Press in Baltimore.

At Brown, Professor Weaver focused on playwriting and theatre. His master's thesis was a full length play entitled Rosa, which was produced professionally in 1993 at Venture Theater in Philadelphia. In that same year he won the PDI Award in playwriting from ETA Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of several other plays, including Berea, which has received two staged readings, one in Chicago and one in Philadelphia.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates of Harvard University has described Professor Weaver as "...one of the most significant poets writing today." Ed Ochester, professor emeritus at University of Pittsburgh has said Professor Weaver is "...the African American successor to Walt Whitman."

Professor Weaver studies Chinese on an ongoing basis, and in 2005 he tested successfully in the intermediate level of fluency in Speaking, Reading, and Writing at the Taipei Language Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. He has convened two international conferences on contemporary Chinese poetry at Simmons and, in that way, given the college an international presence in the world of Chinese poetry. In 2005 he was awarded a gold friendship medal from the Chinese Writers' Association in Beijing, China.

Professor Weaver's papers are held in repository at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.

My background is in social policy, social action, and advocacy. I am particularly interested in social justice and human rights issues for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses but also have a strong focus on issues for other marginalized groups as they are affected by racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, youthism, and other forms of oppression. Of course, many people are affected by more than one form of oppression.

My education and work have focused in these areas, and one position before I came to Simmons School of Social Work was Senior Associate in the Office of the Court-Appointed Monitor for Special Education in Boston. There, under the Allen v. McDonough case brought by parent advocates and the Massachusetts Advocacy Center against the Boston Public Schools for non-delivery of special education services, we strived to obtain rights for the children who were being deprived of an education or whose education was being compromised. My learning there emphasized what I had been taught in my doctoral program – that advocacy and social action are critical to our social work mission and to achieving social justice and obtaining human rights. I try to pass on my own "hands on" learning to my students at Simmons School of Social Work, and I am very rewarded by their passion for social justice.

I have been able to draw from my experience and interests in co-authoring two books that focus on people with disabilities and chronic illnesses as well as other oppressed groups. The first book was Health and Health Care in the Nation's Prisons: Issues, Challenges, and Policies, and the second book was Asset Assessments and Community Social Work Practice. In addition, parts of my current volunteer work that are related to my commitment to issues for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses are at the Samuel P. Hayes Research Library & Perkins Archives at Perkins School for the Blind and as a consulting editor for the journal Health & Social Work, and each of those are valuable learning experiences for me.